


Scars and Raised, Damaged Flesh

by DeathsLights



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Geralt is a sad Witcher, Grief/Mourning, He just wants to sleep, M/M, Pining Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species, Temporary Character Death, Yes it Is, is that too much to ask?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23053120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathsLights/pseuds/DeathsLights
Summary: He’s learned to live a life where desire and want are fleeting and denied. Solitude and isolation are the only keep of Witchers. That is the only birthright they claim. So, he continues down raw, dirt paths in search of contracts that to lead to death and does not allow himself to dwell on what it means to notice an absence of something in his life. If sometimes, he follows the echoes of Jaskier through towns always too late; it doesn’t mean anything.OrWhere even in death the Bard talks.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 24
Kudos: 303





	Scars and Raised, Damaged Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> This fandom is like a goldmine of angst, so I had to step in and write something for it. I wrote this while listening to the playlist "Geralt of Rivia" by nuttyandcandyland on Spotify; it is awesome, check it out if you wanna listen to something while reading.

**Scars and Raised, Damaged Flesh**

He’s on the outskirts of Temeria miles away from White Orchid, yet still the air carries the scent of apple blossoms, sweet and fragrant. The apple, cherry, and peach trees all throughout White Orchid are starting to blossom unfurling from their slumber in soft pinks, whites, and reds. Trees are starting to bud once more; the bite of winter is receding to give way to the warmth of spring. The animals in the woods are more active now. Roach has been eyeing the growth of the grass in recent days; it hasn’t reached the point where it has grown enough for her to eat it, but in a few days there will be tufts of it.

The winter had been silent. Same with the seasons before that. A silence that the coming of sparrows or the screech of hunting snow owls will not fill. No matter how time passes the silence does not become his company like it once did. It lingers like an unwanted specter, unforgiving and haunting around him. Yennefer finds him, once months after the hunt, in a tavern, on the outskirts of Lyria, that smells of piss and misery. The ale is weak tastes of water with a sting of the memory of alcohol. Her violet eyes are cruel. “I came to see if it was true.”

He meets her eyes at waits.

“They say that the White Wolf has shed its false skin.”

His hand tightens around the mug.

Yennefer smile is a dark tilt of her lips. “Just because a beast wears the face of a man does not change what the beast is. Where is your songbird, Geralt?”

His grits his teeth.

Yennefer is quick, leaning over to cup his face, her magic brushes against the edges of his mind. _The mountain. The anger. The fury. The rejection. The salt of Jaskier’s tears._

He pushes her away. “ _Don’t_.”

Her eyes are cold, there will never be warmth there, as she laughs. “No matter who you blame, you are your own misery. Every decision you have made has led to your unhappiness.” The words hard as flint as they rake his ribcage. “Enjoy what you’ve earned.”

He’s learned to live a life where desire and want are fleeting and denied. Solitude and isolation are the only keep of Witchers. That is the only birthright they claim. So, he continues down raw, dirt paths in search of contracts that to lead to death and does not allow himself to dwell on what it means to notice an absence of something in his life. If sometimes, he follows the echoes of Jaskier through towns always too late; it doesn’t mean anything.

If he starts to spend more time in forests than he does among man then no one notices. That is where he belongs with every other creature pushed out by mankind. He’s not one of them. He never was.

* * *

Yennefer starts to bring him contracts that benefit her more than him. “If we are joined together then I will reap its benefit,” she tells him, head held high. He agrees. Doesn’t ask questions as he slays whatever monster comes, takes the coin offered after and leaves. Yennefer waits for him to say no, to ask what she wants from the contracts, and he never does. It goes on and on. The more contracts he fills the more Yennefer frowns at him, ponderous and curious.

Then the Hym happens. It finds something inside of him to hold. He has the sword drawn against his neck, cutting into his flesh before Yennefer slaps him awake. “Get up you idiot!” She grabs him, putting up a barrier as the Hym appears, screeching. It is a shadowed nightmare, towering over them. It’s body not really there but wisps of darkness held together. It rakes its long claws against the barrier. Geralt stumbles to his feet. He casts Yrden and Ingi in succession before stepping out of the area of protection. The Hym follows, lumbering on its tall, thin limbs. It raises its claws too slow to damage him now. His sword cuts through the arms. He slashes against the legs, bringing down the specter and takes its head off with a sweep of his sword. He’s has to thrust his blade into the ground for support, he leans his head against the hilt, as he pants. Blaviken starts to fade until it is only a mist in his mind and no longer visceral and alive. _Salvation is not meant for monsters._ Yennefer’s hands are covered in his blood, as she helps him up. He doesn’t look at her, shrugging off her help he leaves.

Yennefer finds him a week after the Hym. He’s washing his face by a river where the water chills his skin with the last of winter’s cold touch. The wound on his neck is slow healing, still bleeding. She stands by the riverbed in a white, fur-lined cloak pulled tight against her. The cold is bringing colour to her cheeks. He sighs and waits.

“I will never forgive you for what you took from me.” Her eyes are the only point of colour along the dormant black oak trees of the forest around them. He’s never expected forgiveness not from her or him. Her eyes are on the river that flows behind him. “What good is anger when we will live to the end of time?” Softer she says, "And nothing I could do would ever make you as miserable as you make yourself.” It’s not forgiveness. It never will be. It is a start to something, though.

﴾•﴿

“You should go see him,” she tells him once. She doesn’t say before all that’s left is regret among memories and graves. And he should have taken that as a warning.

* * *

Roach trots through the marketplace. Her hooves beat against the cobblestone, at a distance he can hear metal ring from a smith’s hammer, merchants call out their wares. The air smells of manure, hay, the mixing of human sweat, and a hint of baked bread. Stalls run up along the side of the stonewalls, different colours of fabrics nailed up above the shops as rooves. He offers the stalls a glance. Rich dyed fabrics, bottled potions, meats, mead, and trinkets. He holds the reins to let a wagon filled with hay pass. His eyes wander around; they trace shops without attention cataloguing what is being sold before moving to the next one. His eyes land on something familiar. Engraved, dark wood and string. And then he’s off Roach’s saddle, has the shopkeeper’s collar in his grip, dragging him over his wares. “Where?” Bottles crash onto the ground shattering into shards of glass. There is rage brewing, hot and molten in him.

The keeper trembles, paling. “I–I don’t–”

Geralt growls. “The lute. Where. Did. You. Get. It?”

A few townspeople look over. Some have stopped to watch.

The keeper swallows. “B–bought it off a travelling merchant who makes instruments.”

Geralt snarls. He pulls out a dagger, he wedges it between the folds of fat on the man’s neck. “Lie and I take your tongue.” It’s not Jaskier’s lute the man has; it’s his travel pack as well. He’s watched Jaskier jump in front of monsters to get to his lute. He’d seen Jaskier sleep with it cradled to his chest when they camped in the forests. It is not something Jaskier would willing give up.

The shopkeeper tries to claw at Geralt’s hand. He presses the blade harder, drawing blood. None of the items the man has are things that are available this far into the continent. “T–There is a gang of thieves who sell me things they take from travellers,” he says. “I don’t do anything to the travellers. I just sell things.”

The way that human’s compromise with morality has always disgusted him. If it is not my hand that does the deed, why am I guilty? If I pay a Witcher a blood price, how it is not murder?

Blood drips down the keeper’s neck. “Where.”

“I don’t know!” The man flinches as the dagger burrows deeper a few more inches and Geralt will hit his carotid artery. “They alternate between the main paths that travellers take.” Geralt steps back, taking the pack and the lute. He looks down at the wheezing man who bleeds like a slaughtered pig.

Geralt grabs the back of his tunic, throwing him on the street. He casts Igni. He glares down at the quivering merchant. Flames swallow and consume wood behind him. “Choose a cleaner profession,” he grits out before swinging back on Roach.

* * *

He has the leader of the thieves pinned against a tree with his hand around his throat and a dagger embed into the man’s shoulder. He can feel the rabbit quick beat of the man’s heart. The rest of his men lay unconscious on the forest floor. All of them are sure to have broken bones if not worse.

“The bard.”

The man smiles with yellow stained teeth coated in blood. Sweat is collecting on his upper lip. “Lots ‘em. Pretty things they are.”

Geralt pulls out his dagger; the man winces. He thrusts the dagger in harder this time. It hits the man’s shoulder bone. The thief screams. “You stole a lute from him. A bag. Where is he?”

The man draws in a painful breath and laughs, weak and feeble. “Fancy little thing, wouldn’t stop talking. Wouldn’t just let us rob him. Dead, Witcher. Gutted him on the forest floor. He–” Geralt drags the dagger across his neck before he continues. There’s a wet gurgle as hands clutch the wound. As Geralt watches the man fail to draw breaths, the rage does not quell.

He can hear robins sing the arrival of spring in the rowan trees. Twigs snap underneath his boots, and the last bits of snow turning to slush as he walks. He’s been wandering in the forest for the past three hours. He stops. There’s a faint scent. He follows it north until he reaches the place where it is the strongest. Jaskier’s blood. Days old. Too much for a human to survive. He doesn’t realize he’s on his knees in front of where Jaskier’s bled until Roach comes to stand behind him and lowers her head to his shoulder. Her snout is wet, but her breath is warm when she exhales against his neck.

* * *

He wakes under a canopy of evergreen and pine trees cloaked in snow. The night sky is cloudless black. There are no stars. Fire crackles, but he smells no smoke. The forest makes no sound. His hand darts for his sword. He grips the hilt and surges up, sword held out in front of him. Jaskier sits on a log in front of the fire, skin doused in orange. Jaskier doesn’t glance up from the fire. The man isn’t corporeal; he is a like a reflection on the surface of water. Geralt can see through him, can see the snow-covered landscape behind them, the thick trunks of the trees, however his eyes do not help him see further than a few feet.

The anger is quick. A lash against his ribs. How dare they put him before Geralt. How dare they use Jaskier like this. “What is the meaning of this?” he snarls.

The one who wears Jaskier’s face does not move. His eyes are orange in the firelight. “I have things that I have left unsaid that you need to hear, Witcher.”

Geralt casts Igni. The blast of fire goes over the shoulder of the creature. “Remove the face you wear, or your death will not be swift.”

The creature snorts. “Not even _you_ can kill what is already dead.” It looks up. It has the soft, pale blue eyes of Jaskier. Geralt grips his sword harder. “I am me, Geralt.”

“He’s–”

“Dead, yes. I am very well aware of that.” The creature curls an arm around its stomach. “Gutted by thieves. I always thought my death would something more heroic, something to do with monsters.” It removes its arm and blood seeps through the blue doublet it wears. It looks at it. “I suppose humans have always been crueler than any of the monsters we’ve seen.” It looks back up at him. “I am me, Geralt.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

It raises an eyebrow. “You have a Child Surprise, you bound yourself to a crazy witch through a djinn’s wish, you fight a plethora of nightmare inducing creatures, and the ghost of a bard is what makes you skeptical?” The creature leans its weight on its palms, stretching its legs out closer to the fire. “Fine, I’ll tell you something only Jaskier would know. When you told me that you wanted nothing, it was a lie. You had learned to lock up all your desires and bury them into your soul. There was one you could never get rid of, as you gazed at humanity and its scorn, hatred, and repulsion the want for something to accept you–for something to make you feel less monstrous. What you wanted was the ache that ate your heart to leave.”

Geralt grits his teeth. He lowers his sword.

Jaskier offers him a tilt of his mouth in a facsimile of a smile. It’s wrong on his face. On a face that smiled without restrain or falseness. “Come, Witcher sit.” Geralt sits down on the log across from the bard. “There are words that I have left unsaid that you must hear. You said yours on the mountain and now you will hear mine. Then, I will leave you be.”

“Where will you go?”

Jaskier laugh is bitter. “Why does it matter to you?”

It does. If this is the only thing left of Jaskier. If this is all he has of Jaskier then he will not–

He tries to get up.

“You can’t run away. Not here.” The fire burns higher now. Ice crawls up his legs.

“Jaskier–”

“ _No_ , you don’t get to talk. It’s my turn.” Jaskier’s eyes are the surface on a frozen river. His face is devoid of emotion. The words in Geralt’s mouth make no sound. “Was this the peace you desired?”

Geralt wakes to dawn spilling over the purple sky. He hears a fox burrow into the underground a mile away. Roach breaks a low hanging branch. _Fuck_.

﴾•﴿

It happens again the next night. He is on the same log in front of the fire. It snows this time. Fat flakes that drift down in a languid laze. Jaskier doesn’t look up from the fire as he talks.

“Your words were like thorns, always like thorns they prick and they prick and they prick and I let them. I would take them out; the wound would scar over because I told myself that he didn’t mean anything by them.” He doesn’t want to hear this. “That he was just not used to company, to gentleness, but that was a lie. You could be gentle with the things you cared about, and I wasn’t one of them. I never was. The words you said on the mountain I could not remove. They bled and they bled, burrowing deeper and deeper.” Jaskier finally looks at him. There is blood, dripping from his chin. His eyes, searching. “Do know what it is like to live with such pain?”

Geralt draws in a sharp breath. The sun is hidden behind a slate of grey. The leaves of the oak, he’s sleeping under, wave to him. Something starts to congeal over his heart. He digs his palms into his eyes and swears. He wonders what madness does to Witchers.

﴾•﴿

Jaskier sits on the log next to him. He can only see a bit of him from the edge of his sight. He’s always just a spectator in these dreams. “I realized how worthless my life had been. I followed around a man for decades, and I meant nothing to him.”

That’s not fucking true. It isn’t. Geralt wills his fingers to move, but they stay useless and immobile on his knees.

* * *

He avoids sleeping once. He lasts three days before it takes its toll and a wyvern almost beheads him. There are ugly, diagonal claw marks on the right side of his neck that pull anytime that he moves. He has to clench his hands to stop any sounds from coming out. He rubs the healing salve on them, applying by feel. He can’t reach the ones on the back of his neck, so he leaves them be. They’ll heal slow, but they will heal. He doesn’t even notice when he falls asleep.

Jaskier leans over him. Geralt can see the stars in the night sky through his body. They look like freckles on his skin. “You probably shouldn’t be avoiding sleep. We both know how it makes you crankier than usual and how it impairs your already rather poor judgement.”

“You aren’t the one being haunted.” Geralt’s eyebrows fall as he frowns.

Jaskier tilts his head. “It’s surprising that you haven’t been haunted before.” He squats down, folding his arms underneath the back of his knees. He trails his fingers over the bandaged skin. His touch is warm. _How could he be warm?_ “Everyone is haunted by something, Geralt.” His lip twitches. He withdraws his hand. “If you want to be free burn my lute,” Jaskier says.

Geralt lets his fingers fit in between the engravings of the wood, following the knotted lines. In the evenings, when they would rest, Jaskier would lie on top of his bedroll and pluck the strings with deft, absent fingers. Sometimes he plucked in musing fragments of things he was creating, sometimes he plucked in disgusted remembrance of pieces he’d had to practice at Oxenfurt, and sometimes he plucked melodies from a forgotten past where Geralt remembered the vestigial pieces of his childhood. Each time they came together, Jaskier would have more to share. Geralt tucks the lute back into Roach’s saddle.

﴾•﴿

The fire is dying now. Just grey ash and bits of burning red embers. “I stopped singing your ballads. Tore out the pages that were about you and burned them to ash.” He remembers Jaskier chewing his lip, bent over while scribbling in his notebook, muttering rhymes underneath his breath. Geralt half listened at first in paranoia and then years went by and the muttering became soothing. Something he kept his ears attuned to as they travelled or rested.

When Geralt wakes in the morning, he goes and gets Jasiker’s pack from Roach. He finds the leather-bound book and flips it open. On the first page Jasier’s has written ‘Tales of the White Wolf’ accompanied by a crude drawing of Geralt’s wolf medallion. Geralt traces his fingers over the words. He flips through the yellow, worn pages. There notations of what notes to play, lyrics scratched out and reworded, notes of audience reaction. Geralt stops. There are notes of Geralt’s reactions. _Growled like a socially inept cave creature. Threatened to squeeze his neck. Threatened to break his lute over his head. Your singing is like discovering a pie without filling._ He understands the cruel weight of words, so why hadn’t he noticed what he’d been doing? Regret rots in his chest. He keeps flipping until he reaches the remnants of torn pages. There’s only one page before the torn ones. He reads the verses.

_The White Wolf howls alone_

_in search of company._

_Do you hear the solitary note?_

_How it calls and aches._

Yennefer eyes him over a bowl of steaming soup. Her eyes calculative, taking in the tight set of his jaw and the purple bruises underneath his eyes. She sips her soup and says nothing.

﴾•﴿

The snow is starting to recede. The grass is brown in decay, stiff and frozen. They sit on opposite sides underneath an ash tree with a trunk wider than a dragon’s chest. The roots of the tree have risen from the underground and spread like gnarled fingers. “I waited for you for two days on the mountain, and I would have forgiven so easily if you had come. I always did, didn’t I?”

 _Too_ _easily_.

The grass is turning emerald, there are white hyacinths growing in hundreds around them, and the leaves of the ash tree sway in the breeze. Geralt wishes his could see Jaskier’s face. “Once my father had passed his title and lands to me, I was never going to go back to Lettenhove despite the comfort that would have promised me because I chose to spend the rest of my life with you.”

_Why? Why would you go so far?_

The sun is rising reclaiming the sky as its own, pushing the inky night away.

﴾•﴿

The sun is setting touching the horizon where the ocean meets the muted, orange sky. The ocean is like melted gold. Jaskier stands on the shore, trousers rolled up to his knees, his white doublet untucked from is waist. He spreads his arms out, his face to the sun as the wind messes his hair. He turns to Geralt, and his smile drops. He lowers his arms. The wind pulls his shirt and his hair like it wants to take Jaskier away. Geralt can’t move. _Geralt can’t fucking move._ “I wanted you to be happy.” His happiness has meant nothing to anyone including himself. What happiness was to be found in a life of slaughter? Jaskier had tried. Waggled baths at inns when their coin was low by promising to perform for as long as they needed him despite the way it left his voice raspy and his fingers raw. He’d let Geralt have first pick when he’d get extra food in lieu of payment. Jaskier tried everyday that Geralt had him. The waves get wilder, reaching out further into the shore. Geralt tries to warn Jaskier. Nothing comes out. He watches as the water claims Jaskier and pulls him into the ocean.

Geralt’s jerks up and draws in a breath. He forces himself to let go of his blanket. His heart is too loud.

“You’re hiding something,” Yennefer hisses. Her dark hair, sweeping across her face as she leans close to his face.

Geralt remains stubborn and silent. This one is no one else’s problem but his own.

﴾•﴿

The sky is gold. The clouds are outlined in orange. Mountains blanketed in green and stubborn shrubbery rise all around. No.

His mouth opens and the words come. “If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands!”

This time he doesn’t get to turn around. He watches as the words tear something that he can’t fix. The ghost comes to stand next to him. “The first moment I saw you, you seized apart of my heart. As the decades grew, the space you claimed grew and no one else could fit into what was left. I wonder if you ever realized. I sang songs about you for years because if I didn’t, I was afraid that the words would claw themselves from my throat. What else could I do with all those feelings?”

Jaskier moves to stand in front of him. He cups Geralt’s cheeks, cradles his face. There is sorrow in his eyes. “I loved you, Geralt. I loved you,” Jaskier whispers. His lashes are wet. Jaskier presses a kiss to his forehead. “I release thee, Witcher. Be free."

No! Geralt reaches out to grab Jaskier’s forearms, but they pass through and Jaskier fades.

Jaskier doesn’t come back.

Geralt pushes a branch out of his way. He doesn’t even care that it snaps back and cuts his cheek. The forest is cold shaded from the sun by the shelter of leaves that spread out over the skyline. Bushes of blackberries bare fruit that iridescent blue-green swallows swoop at. He can hear a river at a distance. He hears a portal open behind. He pushes forward. There a rumors of a golden lamp residing in the forest.

Yennefer grabs his shoulder, nails digging into his flesh. “What have you been asking sorceresses and sorcerers all over the continent about?”

“Why ask when you know?”

Yennefer slaps him. Her nails scratch against his cheek. “Do you even know of the price of what you ask?” He knows. Yennefer grabs his chin and forces him to look at her. “You don’t. Necromancy is a desecration. What you bring back won’t be what you wanted it. It only brings back shadows. No one is worth it.”

“He is.” 

Her eyes lose the brittle hardness. She holds his face. “Who?” Even as she asks, her magic is already reaching into his mind. “Your bard.” He dislodges her hands those conversations are theirs and no one else’s. She sees enough. There is pity and a sadness there. She grabs his hands and pulls him into a portal.

She takes him back to the inn she is residing in. Her room is grand. It smells of sweet, summer flowers. There is a fire burning in the fireplace. A large bed in the centre of the room. She pushes him down on the mattress that sinks with his weight. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

Geralt doesn’t look up from his lap. “Yes.”

She rolls her eyes, going to fill a goblet of wine from a pitcher by a table near her bed. She waves her arm, her sleeves flare with her gesture. “I’m going to need more than that.”

“There was too much blood for a mortal to survive.” There hadn’t even been a body. Animals having picked it clean.

She hums, looking out the window as she thinks. “But, you weren’t there when it happened, right?”

Geralt looks up. “What does that matter?”

“It means, we have an incomplete story.”

The inn is filled with people all drunk and joyous. The windows are open, so the gentle summer breeze can air out the smell of acholic sweat. The tables are packed and food ordered in plenty. Both of them sit in a darkened corner away from the rest of them. Yennefer holds her rose tea between her palms. “If he had been a ghost, he wouldn’t have let you go.” Things that remain after death face corruption. Are warped into nightmares and distorted mirrors of what they once were. “He would have taken you with him if he was.” Yennefer taps her nails against the table. “If he wasn’t a ghost, what was he?”

“He was warm,” he remembers.

Yennefer stops drumming her nails, frowning. “He shouldn’t have been.” Ghosts are cold, leeching life and warmth from others.

Fuck. He was so distracted by the everything that Jaskier had said that he hadn’t paid attention to anything.

“He only came to me in my dreams.”

They both stare at the other.

Yennefer digs her hands into the dirt. He doesn’t know what she will find after so many months have passed. She closes her eyes before snapping them open. “Someone found him. A sorceress.”

The end up in a room made of grey stone. There is a beating hearth that warms the cold stone. The window is open, bringing sunlight and the sweet smell of clover in on the summer breeze. There’s a canopy bed in the centre of the room where dark red curtains are pulled closed. He can hear a heartbeat. He stands in front of the curtain. He parts it, and Jaskier is there on bed pale like he’s been bleached of colour and thin but there. Geralt kneels down by him. Geralt grabs his hand, clutching it. It’s warm. “Jaskier.” There is no movement. He squeezes Jaskier’s hand. “Jaskier?”

He hears footsteps against stone coming from the northern side, but he can’t bring himself to move. “Someone is coming,” he warns Yennefer who is busy looking at the runes etched into the stonewalls. The door opens, Geralt puts himself in front Jaskier, Yennefer raises her hands, and a woman steps inside. She is young, her eyes are grey as rain clouds, and hair dark as black storm clouds.

She sees Yennefer first.

“Oh, I wondered what had broken through the wards.” When she sees Geralt something hard settles in eyes, she narrows her eyes. “Witcher.” She steps further into the room but stops when Geralt’s hand goes to the sword on his hip.

“Why has does he not wake?”

The woman folds her arms over her chest. “He’s in a restorative sleep. His injury was too severe that I couldn’t heal him all at once, so I had to put him in stasis while I worked. It’s not easy to regrow guts nor to stop internal bleeding.” She makes a move to get around him, but he doesn’t let her pass.

“Who are you?”

“Lucina Magdalena Draus.” She rises her chin mouth set in a thin line. “Move, Witcher.”

He stays were he is.

“Oh for–Geralt just let her help.” Yennefer grabs his elbow, trying to pull him away. He stands his ground. “Be reasonable, she isn’t going to hurt him if she’s been keeping him alive for months,” Yennefer snaps.

“Why are you helping him?”

Lucina clenches her jaw. “No matter how much the fool wasted his life trailing after you, he had a life apart from although you had no interesting in knowing.” He bares his teeth. She gives him unpleasant smile. “I could never hurt more than you.” She turns and dismisses him, going over to Jaskier. She removes the blanket over him, pulling his tunic up. There’s a line of raised pink scar tissue the length of his hip and the width of three fingers. She runs her fingers over it. Yennefer’s nails bury themselves in his forearm as warning when he makes a move to go to Jaskier.

She leans over him. Her hair shielding his face as it falls over his face. He can hear her whisper. “Wake up, you stubborn fucker.”

Jaskier’s eyes open, slow and dazed. “Luc.” He smiles, lifting his hand, he tucks her hair behind her ear. “You are a beautiful sight as always.”

She presses her lips together in annoyance. “How do you feel?”

Jaskier smile slips. “Less fragile and less like my insides want out. It stills hurts when I try to sit up.” It returns flirtatious. “I’m sure your lips could offer me a remedy,” he winks.

Yennefer snorts.

Jaskier’s looks up and finally sees them. “Grealt?” He tries to sit up and lets out groan, biting his lip, and curling forward.

“You, dumbass,” Lucina hisses.

Geralt breaks out of Yennefer’s grip, steadying Jaskier. Jaskier meets his eye. He wrenches himself out of Geralt’s grip, panting and sweating. His eyes are large. “Lucina.” His voice is tinged in panic. “Lucina!”

She pushes Geralt away, putting an arm around Jaskier’s shoulders. “Shh, Julian, it’s real. The Witcher is here.” She grabs Jaskier’s hand. “Look.” She guides it toward Geralt who reaches forward to grasp it. Jaskier’s flinches already trying to pull away. He stills when Geralt squeezes it. Lucina backs up.

“Oh,” he says breathless.

Jaskier’s tugs, his weak and feelable. Geralt lets himself be pulled onto the bed. Jaskier touches his face, fingers light against cheekbone. “Oh.” He watches as something closes in Jaskier’s eyes as they dim and his mouth goes tight. It’s unexpected. Jaskier pulls away. Grealt clutches his hand to stop him. “Why are you here?”

Geralt frowns.

Jaskier yanks his hand back. His cheeks heated. “You were the one that told me to go! Why are you here?” he yells.

“Julian–” Lucina’s hands flutter over his shoulders.

Jaskier dodges her, grabbing one of her wrists. His glare is furious and caustic. His chest expands in quick, jerky movements, as he struggles to breath. “You told me to go,” he accuses.

Lucina covers his eyes. “Sleep,” she orders. His body goes lax, falling forward. Geralt catches him, lowering him to the bed.

“Dramatic as always,” Yennefer mutters after a moment.

Lucina draws in a breath, straightening her spine. “Leave, if you stay here, it will do no good.”

“No.”

“No?” she repeats.

He holds Jaskier’s hand and presses his lips to it. He will not squander this. No matter how long it will take, he will earn back what he has lost. “No, I will not go. You may try to make me leave, but you won’t be able to.”

“You had two years to regret what had done and you didn’t. No matter what you do the words you’ve said can never be taken back nor can the hurt you’ve done. People do not forget cruelty.”

He brushes the sweat soaked locks, curling on Jaskier’s forehead. Wounds heal, but the scars that are left, raised, damaged flesh, will never let life be the same. All he can do is wait and see what will be left behind in time.

**Author's Note:**

> This might get another work from Jaskier's pov if I find the motivation. Thank you for reading!


End file.
